Well, he thought, let’s not get too exciting.
He had a bad feeling creep over him. He looked out over the sea again, and a few seagulls squawked and circled the ship. He looked down to the wake, where two dolphins were playing and racing with the ship as she plowed on westward. It was a beautiful day, and indeed a perfect day for sailing. He hoped there were no storm clouds brewing beyond the horizon. He was now a seasoned sailor, and he knew better. Things in the future were going to get very exciting indeed, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to change it.
They were nowhere near the point of no return yet, and California was still visible and a brown smudge on the eastern horizon. No, he couldn’t turn back. He walked back into the bridge, and seated once again on the captain’s chair, tried to relax as best he could. He thought about the long chain of bizarre events that had led him to this place and time and shook his head in disbelief.
If someone had pulled him aside six years ago, right before he sailed out of Pearl Harbor on the USS Hughes, and told him that one day in the near future over six billion people would die in the blink of an eye, and that he and Suplee would be on a nightmare voyage with an insane captain fighting for their very lives, he would have laughed in their face.
It wasn’t so funny now.
His mind again turned back to what Suplee had said about the food chain, and he had to agree. Untold thousands of ships over the centuries had sailed off over the horizon, never to be seen again, their fate unknown to all but those who sailed with them.
A nearly imperceptible shudder when through his body at the thought. Only time would tell how things played out. He let the ship’s engines’ vibrations relax him as he settled his mind for the long voyage ahead.
Chapter 11: An Empty Vessel
It was an unusually hot mid-June afternoon at Camp Navajo, and Jimenez was stripped to the waist, glistening with sweat as he hefted the last of what seemed like thousands of cases of MREs to Tim, who was standing in the bed of the deuce-and-a-half truck parked outside of one of the myriad bunkers they had gained access to.
Tim and Jimenez had broken into the Army post’s headquarters building and found the keys to all of them, along with a ledger in the quartermaster’s office, listing what each bunker contained and how much. Like the bunkers on Volivoli atoll, it was a virtual laundry list of military equipment, ammunition, and rations.
Tim tossed the case into place with the rest, dropped down onto the dusty, overgrown access road, and handed Jimenez a warm bottle of Gatorade. The younger man downed it in three huge gulps. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and tossed the empty bottle into the dark recess of the building, where it bounced loudly off the poured concrete floor out of sight of the two men.
“That was the last of it, Sar’ Major,” Jimenez said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “I don’t understand why you wanted all the MREs.”
“One can never have enough ammo, food, or dry socks, Taco.”
“The ammo I can understand, and with this place, we’ve got enough to fight off a whole division. But we’ve got enough food at home, why the MREs?”
“These will be back up, just in case. I want every house to have enough of them to feed everyone for a few weeks. I know what the winters can be like up here, and we could all get snowed in for a few weeks at a time. Until we’ve grown enough fresh vegetables and fruits, and figured out ways to store them over the winter, this is an insurance policy,” Tim said, sitting down by the rear wheels of the truck in the shade.
“Okay, I’m with you now.”
“Better to err on the side of safety, Taco.”
“When those squids get their shit together, and that railroad guy figures how to get the trains running, maybe we’ll have fresh pineapples and shit from Hawaii.”
“Until then—”
“Until then we get by with what we’ve got and fall back on the best and surest way to block up one’s colon the US Government ever devised,” Jimenez cut in, which made Tim laugh.
“Taco, you’ve obviously never had C-Rations. Why they even put toilet paper in them is beyond me,” he said with a shake of his head.
“It won’t be long now, eh?” Jimenez said.
“The baby you mean?” Tim asked, and Jimenez nodded. “Izzy says that it could be any day now.”
Pretty exciting, eh?”
“You could say that.”
“There might be more babies soon,” Jimenez said, which made Tim snap his head up and glare at Jimenez, who paled noticeably.
“Taco, if you’re trying to tell me you’ve knocked up Robyn I—”
“Oh shit, Sar’ Major, not that I know of!”
“Not that you know of?” Tim asked incredulously.
“No, sir! I was just thinking about what I heard Ian telling Izzy the other day, that him and Paula are trying to have one!”
“Is that so?”
“Sar’ Major. You know how Robyn and I feel about each other. I’d never hurt a hair on her head. But that will probably happen too… at some point,” he finished, the last coming out as a whisper.
“I know that, Taco. I’m not sure I’m ready to be a father yet, let alone a grandpa,” Tim said with a sigh.
“You already are a father, Tim,” Taco said, testing the waters. It was the first time he’d called him by his first name.
“It’s a little different with a baby, Taco.”
“So we’ll learn together. I’m looking forward to being an uncle, Tío Juan. It’s got a nice ring to it!”
“Uncle Taco,” Tim laughed. “It sounds like a burrito cart I got food poisoning from once in Balboa, Panama back in the eighties.”
“Every family needs one beaner,” Jimenez cracked. He stood and brushed the dirt from the seat of his pants, held his hand out to Tim, and helped the older man to his feet.
“You know, Taco, you’re okay for a jarhead,” Tim said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Okay, Sar’ Major,” Jimenez said, not wishing to push his luck any further with the first name.
“One more thing, Taco. You call me ‘Tim’ one more time I will rape your soul,” he said. “We are not bestest friends, we will not be holding hands and singing Kumbaya and playing grab-ass in the showers, got that?”
Jimenez nodded, not sure if Tim was joking or not. They’d started off towards the cab of the truck, when they heard the approaching sound of a speeding Hum-Vee, then saw the vehicle bouncing towards them being trailed by a huge plume of dust from the road, headlights flashing, and now the horn was beeping.
It slid to a stop feet from their parked truck, blanketing the pair in a cloud of fine, choking dust. They heard, but didn’t see the door to the Hum-Vee open, then Robyn’s voice in a loud shout: “Dad, come quick!”
As the dust settled they saw Robyn, half out of the vehicle, waving frantically for Tim to come to her. “What is it?”
“Izzy says it’s time, and for you to come back now!”
“The baby?”
“Yeah, it’s coming now!”
“Taco, you take the truck and drive it back to the compound. I’ll go with Robyn!”
“You got it, Sar’ Major!” Jimenez ran back to the truck while Tim ran to the passenger side of the Hum-Vee, hopped in. Robyn climbed back behind the wheel, spun out in a wide turn to head back to Williams, leaving Jimenez in another cloud of dust.
As they bounced back down the service road towards the entrance to the camp, Tim asked, “Is everything okay?
“Yes, Dad. Everything is alright. Holly’s water broke about an hour ago, and Izzy sent me to get you.”
Tim relaxed some, holding on as Robyn sped down the dirt track and onto the overgrown road leading out to I-40. “Slow down, I want to get there in one piece!”
“Dad, you’re the one who taught me to drive, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. So, is everything fine?”
“Yes. Izzy said Holly is doing fine, and so is the baby, so cool your jets.”
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“Good.”
“It’s all really exciting!”
“Just don’t you and Taco get any ideas,” he said.
“Dad, don’t worry. Juan and I have talked about it, but we want to wait a little while.”
“Good idea. Maybe when you’re about thirty or so.”
“Dad, I know you think I’m still your little girl, and in a lot of ways I am,” Robyn said, turning onto the onramp of I-40 and heading west, “and I love that. But I’m not a little girl anymore. Taco and I love each other.”
“I know, Robyn. It doesn’t stop me from caring about you.” Tim sighed. “He is almost ten years older that you.”
“Dad, don’t even go there,” Robyn snapped, holding up her index finger. “Taco and I have the same age difference as you and Holly. And you said it yourself, you’d like to see a new community sprout up, to have civilization come back, and to make that happen, there’s going to have to be babies, lots of them.”
“Alright, alright already,” he said in resignation. “Let’s get through this one first.”
“Dad, it’s going to happen at some point, so prepare yourself,” Robyn laughed, and Tim groaned. His little girl was grown up. “I read once somewhere that you’d need at least a hundred and sixty people in a settlement so as not to have kids with extra fingers and toes or webbed feet sprouting up in a few generations, and we only have a fraction of that now,” Tim said.
“A fairly deep gene pool?”
“Yeah, with a little chlorine added from time to time.” Tim smirked. “I’ll have to talk to Izzy about that.”
“There’s something else I need to talk to you about, Dad. I know your mind is on the baby right now, but this can’t wait.”
“What is it?”
“I know you said to not use the HAM radio because of the strange messages that you and Sergeant Williams got, but I was playing around with my stuff this morning after you and Taco headed over to Camp Navajo. I got this weird message. I didn’t reply, but it wasn’t from any station that’s familiar to us,” she said, driving around the bigger of the bumps in the cracked and deteriorating asphalt of the highway like she was in a slalom track.
“What did it say?”
“It was weird. Whoever is behind the key was slow, sounded like he was really rusty, with a lot of misspellings. It was a warning to us.”
“To us?” Tim asked, perplexed.
“Specifically to you, they knew your name,” she said, popping a piece of chewing gum in her mouth. “The message was, quote: urgent, inform soonest Sergeant Major T Flannery that an armed force has departed Washington, DC three weeks prior, headed to Arizona to arrest you, secure the codes, and transport you, any operational aircraft, and its pilot back to Washington, unquote.”
Tim let out a long, loud whistle and shook his head. “Aren’t you the little ray of sunshine.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger, Dad.”
“I’m not, Baby. It’s just something I’ve been afraid of since we got back, I just didn’t think it’d be so soon.”
“What are you going to do?” “I haven’t a fucking clue. I’ll have to talk this over with Izzy and Taco. We’ll have to do something.”
“Can they arrest you?”
“Again, I haven’t a clue. Maybe there really is someone who’s president, and somehow they found out I have the codes, and want them back.”
“But you don’t have them! They were vaporized on Volivoli!”
“I know,” Tim lied, knowing full well he still had them squirreled away in the basement of the house.
“How did they know your name?”
“There’s been enough communication between here and Oahu over the last few months, and my name has been in enough of them. The airwaves are open, and whoever has been listening broke our code, I guess.” “They couldn’t possibly know exactly where we are. We never, ever said the name of the town, only that we were in Arizona.”
“I’ll have to have a meeting with Izzy and Taco, and I’ll get hold of Jerry on the Satcom radio and see what he has to say. The message said that a ‘armed force’ left Washington a few weeks ago. They’re probably only using vehicles, and with the condition of the roads, it will probably take them weeks to come this far west. We have no idea what the bridges over the Mississippi are like,” Tim said, his mind now going a million miles an hour.
“So it could be weeks if not months before they get here,” Robyn said.
“Yeah, and we know they’re not flying. Why else would they want our aircraft and pilot?”
“I agree,” Robyn said. She onto the red dirt road that led up to the compound, pulled up in front of their house, and shut the engine off. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know yet. Don’t say a word to anyone else about this until I talk with Izzy and Taco. Right now I’ve got more important things to worry about,” Tim said, hopping out of the vehicle and sprinting up the stairs to the front door.
He ran inside and called out for Holly, only to be rewarded by the sound of a baby’s loud wails coming from upstairs.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, and bounded up the stairs, following the sound. He made his way down the short hall to his bedroom, where he saw Izzy standing by the bed, smiling warmly. Holly was holding a wrapped little bundle. The sound of the baby’s crying had stopped, and he saw that Holly had exposed one of her breasts and the baby’s mouth was locked onto the nipple, sucking away happily.
Holly looked over at him and smiled tiredly. “There you are. Come and meet your son!”
“Tim sat on the edge of the bed, a huge grin splitting his face. He looked down at the small wonder feeding happily, and looked up into Holly’s eyes. “He’s beautiful.”
Holly sighed. “Aye, he is.”
“Fastest delivery I’ve ever seen,” Izzy said. “Mother and baby are doing splendidly!” The baby took its mouth away from the nipple and yawned widely. Holly covered back up and looked at Tim. “Would you like to hold him, Dad?” she asked.
Tim took the bundle from her gingerly. “So tiny...,” he remarked, looking over the newborn in his arms. He had Holly’s deep green eyes and Tim’s shock of dark hair.
“Have you two thought of a name?” Izzy asked.
“No, not really,” Holly said.
“Walter,” Tim said.
“Your father?” Holly asked, and Tim nodded.
Tears were welling up in his eyes and he was finding it difficult to speak. He gingerly handed the infant back to Holly, and wiped the tears from his eyes.
“That’s a nice testament. I’m sure he’d have been proud,” Holly said.
“I’m sorry I was late,” Tim said. “I wanted to be here.”
“It’s okay, Tim. He came out pretty fast.”
“I know, still…”
“You’ll be here by my side for the next one,” she told him with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Next one?” Tim gaped.
“Aye. I think we’ll have a few more,” she teased.
“We’ll talk about that later, babe,” he replied, leaned over, and kissed her tenderly. He brushed a few wayward strands of hair away from her eyes and caressed her cheek. “I think mother and son need to take a little nap now,” Izzy said, hanging his stethoscope around his neck. “Just give me a minute, alright?” Tim asked, and Izzy nodded and left, closing the door behind him. Holly reached up and caressed his cheek tenderly. “Timothy, don’t worry not being here. He came awfully fast. Robyn got to you as fast as she could.”
“This changes everything,” Tim said.
“What do you mean?”
“I have even more reason to protect you and him. The stakes just got a little higher.”
“We’ll both protect him. What are you worried about?”
“Nothing, just that now we have him, and it means that life will go on.”
“That it will, Tim. He’ll have us to protect him, and to teach him everything we know,” she said, leaning back into the pillows and yawni
ng.
“I’ll let you two have a little nap, okay?”
“Aye, I am tired,” she whispered, her eyes droopy.
Tim leaned in and kissed her forehead gently and whispered, “I love you, babe.”
“I love you too, Tim. Now go on and go talk with Izzy. I know how much you and he love to kibitz.”
“Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. I love you, now go on and get out of here and leave a tired mother to sleep!”
Tim kissed Holly again, then kissed little Walter on the head. “We’ll be right downstairs, babe. Call if you need anything.”
Tim headed down the stairs to the kitchen, where Robyn was making a pot of coffee. Izzy was standing by the counter with his hands in his pockets.
“I’ve got a little brother!” Robyn said excitedly, hugging Tim tightly. “Can I see him?”
“Not right now, Robyn. Holly and Walter are taking a nap,” Izzy said.
“Walter?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s my father’s name,” Tim said. “I thought it would be a good name for him.”
Robyn poured cups of steaming coffee for all of them, then sat down across the counter from Tim.
Tim took a sip of his coffee, set the cup in front of him and sighed. “This is all a little much for me to grasp. So much has happened these last few years.”
“I know, Dad. You raised me up okay, you’ll do a great job.”
“Robyn is right. You will do a fantastic job,” Izzy agreed, sipping his own coffee. “You’ve got everyone here to help out, too.”
“Yeah, Dad, you’re not alone now,” Robyn said, taking his hand.
“All the more reason to be worried,” Tim said, gripping his mug tightly.
“Why would you be worried?” Izzy asked.
Tim dropped the bombshell. He told Izzy what Robyn had told him on their way back to the house, along with his fears, and when he was finished, it was Izzy’s turn to let out a whistle.
“Do you have any ideas?”
“No, Iz, I don’t. I want to wait until Taco gets back from Camp Navajo, and maybe get Ian over here. He was in the Army reserve in Australia a while back, so he’s the only other one here with military experience. We’ll have a brainstorming session, and maybe come up with a plan. Right now, I don’t want to say anything to anyone, especially Holly. No sense getting everyone worked up.”
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